Pokémon Go Jungle Cup – Great League Edition: Best Pokémon

Find the strongest Pokémon for Jungle Cup’s Great League Edition

Niantic

In the jungle, the mighty jungle, no trainer sleeps tonight – you’ve got duels to win! Pokémon Go Jungle Cup – Great League Edition will run from April 5 to 19, 2024, so you have two weeks to score as many wins as you can to maximize your rank. What’s more, the second half of this time window features a quadruple Stardust bonus for wins, making each success even more valuable.

This Go Battle League competition runs on a special ruleset limiting participating Pokémon to a maximum amount of 1,500 competition points (CP). It further limits the amount of Pokémon you can use by restricting you to monsters of the types Normal, Grass, Electric, Poison, Ground, Flying, Bug, and Dark. Gligar and Galarian Stunfisk are banned outright.

Welcome your enemies to the jungle with the best Pokémon for Jungle Cup – Great League Edition in Pokémon Go based on statistics and simulations provided by PvPoke.com.

Jungle Cup – Great League Edition: Best Leads

These Pokémon aggressively apply pressure on your opponent right from the start of a duel and can survive even tough battles for a long time – they are perfect to open a match up, enabling you to score an early knockout or set up a strong counter play.

  1. Shadow Steelix (Dragon Tail, Psychic Fangs, Crunch)
  2. Swampert(S) (Mud Shot, Hydro Cannon, Earthquake)
  3. Mandibuzz (Snarl, Dark Pulse, Aerial Ace)
  4. Steelix (Dragon Tail, Psychic Fangs, Crunch)
  5. Shadow Quagsire (Mud Shot, Aqua Tail, Stone Edge)
  6. Pidgeot (Wing Attack, Feather Dance, Brave Bird)
  7. Clodsire (Mud Shot, Earthquake, Stone Edge)
  8. Vigoroth (Counter, Body Slam, Rock Slide)
  9. Mantine (Wing Attack, Aerial Ace, Ice Beam)
  10. Shadow Abomasnow (Powder Snow, Weather Ball (Ice), Energy Ball)

(S) = Regular form and Shadow form perform comparably.

Jungle Cup – Great League Edition: Best Safe Switches

If the opening pairing is to your disadvantage, you should consider switching out your lead for another Pokémon. This is where this category comes into play. They are either strong leads themselves or are specialized in countering some of the most popular leads. In any case, a switch will preserve your original lead to fight later on in the battle and perhaps force your opponent to also adapt their strategy on the fly.

  1. Vigoroth (Counter, Body Slam, Rock Slide)
  2. Steelix(S) (Dragon Tail, Psychic Fangs, Crunch)
  3. Charizard(S) (Wing Attack, Blast Burn, Dragon Claw)
  4. Shadow Gliscor (Wing Attack, Earthquake, Aerial Ace)
  5. Shadow Drapion (Poison Sting, Crunch, Aqua Tail)
  6. Clodsire (Mud Shot, Earthquake, Stone Edge)
  7. Mandibuzz (Snarl, Dark Pulse, Aerial Ace)
  8. Guzzlord (Dragon Tail, Dragon Claw, Crunch)
  9. Dubwool (Double Kick, Body Slam, Payback)
  10. Abomasnow (Powder Snow, Icy Wind, Energy Ball)

Jungle Cup – Great League Edition: Best Closers

These Pokémon are particularly useful when there are no shields left in play on either side – they are incredibly tough themselves or end battles quickly thanks to powerful charge attacks.

  1. Skarmory (Steel Wing, Brave Bird, Sky Attack)
  2. Clodsire (Mud Shot, Earthquake, Stone Edge)
  3. Shadow Abomasnow (Powder Snow, Weather Ball (Ice), Energy Ball)
  4. Shadow Skarmory (Steel Wing, Brave Bird, Sky Attack)
  5. Incineroar (Snarl, Darkest Lariat, Blast Burn)
  6. Piloswine (Powder Snow, Avalanche, High Horsepower)
  7. Shadow Excadrill (Mud Shot, Drill Run, Rock Slide)
  8. Altaria (Dragon Breath, Sky Attack, Hurricane)
  9. Hisuian Electrode (Thunder Shock, Wild Charge, Energy Ball)
  10. Ferrothorn (Bullet Seed, Power Whip, Thunder)

Jungle Cup – Great League Edition: Best Attackers

These Pokémon perform best when fighting a trainer who still has shields, while you no longer have shields yourself. They combine important resistances and strong fast attacks to compensate for this disadvantage. For this reason, you rarely see Shadow forms in this role – they take more damage than their regular counterparts, making them a risky card to put on the table. Jungle Cup has a relatively high amount of Shadow forms in this category, though.

  1. Steelix (Dragon Tail, Psychic Fangs, Crunch)
  2. Skarmory (Steel Wing, Brave Bird, Sky Attack)
  3. Shadow Steelix (Dragon Tail, Psychic Fangs, Crunch)
  4. Mandibuzz (Snarl, Dark Pulse, Aerial Ace)
  5. Stunfisk (Mud Shot, Mud Bomb, Discharge)
  6. Shadow Skarmory (Steel Wing, Brave Bird, Sky Attack)
  7. Mantine (Wing Attack, Aerial Ace, Ice Beam)
  8. Altaria (Dragon Breath, Sky Attack, Hurricane)
  9. Clodsire (Mud Shot, Earthquake, Stone Edge)
  10. Wigglytuff (Charm, Icy Wind, Disarming Voice)

Jungle Cup – Great League Edition’s meta is reminiscent of older editions of regular Great League – Pokémon like Skarmory, Altaria, Pidgeot, and Steelix are dominating forces. That’s got some advantages, of course: You may not need to invest into new fighters and can rely on some of your trusty companions from the old days.


Published
Marco Wutz

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg